


Red Queen's Race

by Trobadora



Category: Once Upon a Time in Wonderland (TV)
Genre: Episode: s01e11 Heart of the Matter, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:39:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2383574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Can you outrun your heart? Will Scarlet certainly tries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Queen's Race

**Author's Note:**

  * For [APgeeksout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/APgeeksout/gifts).



> You said you liked unusual narration - I hope this works for you!

Now, _here,_ you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.  
\-- Lewis Carroll, _Through the Looking Glass_  


~*~

**Beat.**

Red pulsing glow in Jafar's hand, coming for him. There's no escape, no running. Jafar has Will's heart and will force it back into place.

Jafar has Will's heart, and the laws of magic are as good as broken. Jafar's as good as won, and it's Will's fault. 

He should regret that more, shouldn't he?

Yes, it's his own damn fool self who did it - he's the bloody fool who told Jafar where he hid his heart. Because - well, because ...

Because. 

**Beat.**

Anastasia lounges on her throne, pretending to listen. Petitioners gather before her. Will lurks behind a corner and listens for a trace of Sherwood, of home in her voice. There's none in her deliberate diction, her tone of voice so cultivated and artificial her mother would have been proud.

The Queen's dress, stark and red. The Queen's lips, curled in a smile so cold, so false, she looks nothing like Anastasia. The Queen's red, red crown. Everything she wanted. Everything she tossed him aside for.

"We wouldn't want to be tedious, now, would we, darlings?" the Red Queen admonishes her subjects, and that's - inevitably - when her guards notice him.

He's pretty good at running, always has been. Thieves have to be; hopeless men even more so. One last glance back, and he's jumping down a balcony, crashing into the brush below. 

**Beat.**

Cora's hand in Will's chest, clenching around his heart: the pain feels good, a physical squeeze and bruise that, just for a moment, blots out the pull and the yearning and the desperate tightness Anastasia left behind.

Then her hand withdraws: red pulsing glow in Cora's hand, and it's gone. Gone, ache and need and _Ana's eyes, her smile, just for him, her hands outstretched -_ he's watching from a distance. The feelings that choked him a moment ago are far and away, a faint echo colouring his memory. 

Cora tells him to be on his way. The hollow in his chest echoes with her words. Yes, he'll be on his way.

It's for the best.

**Beat.**

Will crouches on the window sill, peeking around the corner, watching.

Anastasia is holding out her arms, and servants wrap her in fine fabric, a dress as red as blood, battle armour for a queen. Will is looking - still looking - for a chink in her armour. There isn't one.

Bloody hell. He doesn't even have his heart; why is she still getting to him? Why is he still doing this to himself?

**Beat.**

Will studies the dungeon floor, the dirt under his fingernails, the creases in his trousers. He doesn't look over to the adjoining cell. He won't.

He won't look, but her gaze is on him, an inexorable pull. He won't look, but he sees it clear enough, Anastasia looking at him with that desperation, that _feeling_ ... He huffs a breath, pulls a grimace, tries to shrug off the thread between them. 

Pushes his fingers under his thighs, sitting on them. It doesn't make the itch to reach out go away.

But iron bars are the least of what's between them. 

**Beat.**

Will's head on the block, the witnessing crowd a distant roar. He feels her eyes on him, from far and high. Out of his reach. Above him, the executioner raises his axe. He clenches his eyes closed, feels the beat of his absent heart in his throat.

Part of him can't believe she's actually doing this, even with his goading. Should have known, of course - bloody stubborn, she is, and nothing she won't do to prove that she can. There might have been limits once, but not any more. Of course not; the Red Queen won't admit to any limits. She does what she pleases, takes what she wants, throws away what has no use for her. 'course she'd be doing it, angry enough - and he made damn sure she is.

Disbelief and fear and an obscure shred of _hope_ all mingle into a terrible mess in his head. He does his best to squash the hope, bites down on his tongue that wants to call her name. It's over, finally over. Part of him is relieved.

Then the blade slices through his bindings, and Alice pulls him away.

**Beat.**

Storm clouds are drawing closer across the sky. Jafar's storm. 

She insists they must run. Her voice is breaking. Will can't believe a word.

The Red Queen's eyes are big and wet and filled with a despair Will remembers only too well. The petty part of him thinks, _Good. Serves her right._ The rest of him still, even without his heart, can't keep himself from wanting to lean forward, to take her hand, to tell her everything will be all right.

He doesn't.

She is pleading. Will isn't listening; he can't. He's learned his lesson too well.

It feels cold, callous, even to himself. He's cold inside, after all; he has no warmth left to give. She used it all up and tossed him aside. 

_Never the day, Ana. Ain't never gonna be the day._

**Beat.**

"Thank you," Ana says into the silence of Jafar's dungeon. "You shouldn't have, but ... thank you."

Will knows bloody well that he shouldn't have. Jafar's going to win, and it's him who did it. He tilts his head, smirks at her. "Heart's not worth it," he says in his best flippant tone. "All it does is get broken. Who needs that?"

Ana's little gasp of a laugh sounds broken more than anything. "Wish I'd thought of that."

**Beat.**

Life in Storybrooke: a life of false memories that never included even the shadow of her. But even then, there was an echo in the hollow of Will's heart, leaving him wanting something he couldn't name. When the curse is broken and the memories return, it's almost a relief, remembering her. Knowing her name, putting a face to his missing pieces. 

He walks around for days, seeing her in every snatch of pink or red, every blonde head in the corner of his eye.

It's never her, of course. Even in Storybrooke, it's never the day.

**Beat.**

The Jabberwocky slides into Anastasia's mind, cracks it like an egg. Draws wishes out like breath pulled from her lungs, leaving her wrecked and sobbing. She's falling to pieces, broken open and apart before his eyes. 

And Will's got to watch. Nothing else he can do. He stares at her, helpless, breath catching, trapped in the tight constriction of his chest. 

It may not be a heart, but it hurts nonetheless. 

**Beat.**

Red pulsing glow in a sturdy box, tucked away under the kitchen sink.

It sat there, unnoticed, for twenty years while time stood still in cursed Storybrooke. Then memory floods back in, and it _pulls_. Heartstrings, inevitable, inescapable.

There's a hollow yearning where his heart isn't, and it's her. It's still her.

**Beat.**

Blonde hair spilling over the pillow. Anastasia's hands framing his face. Her eyes wide, her lips curling into a shy smile. He's crouching over her, almost not daring to touch.

She pulls him down.

**Beat.**

Her name still echoes in his very bones. Every star still has her name.

**Beat.**

Anastasia, astride him. Her eyes gleaming with delight. Her mouth open, panting. Her hips, grinding down on him.

**Beat.**

His pulse hammers in his throat, in his chest. He thrums with the beat of the glowing heart in his hand. Just holding it _aches_ , tightens his ribcage, squeezes his lungs. It's right there in his palm, everything he's been holding at bay.

His fingers clench around the glow in his palm; it costs him not to squeeze too tight, to squeeze the glow and the memories and the life right out of it. To crush it to dust, like Ana did. 

No. He'll never stand it if _that_ goes back into his chest. 

He puts it away. He walls it away.

**Beat.**

"Why didn't you, anyway?" Will asks, to distract himself more than anything. If he gets to lash out at her, too - well, all the better. "If it really was giving you that much pain. Hanging out with the Queen of Hearts and all, did it never occur to you to learn how to get rid of the pesky thing?"

Ana tilts her head back, looking up at the ceiling for a long moment. When she finally looks at him again, her lips turn up into the Red Queen's insincere smile. "It _would_ have made things easier, darling. I'd never have stopped for _you_." She gives a full-body twitch, and the mask falls away. When she continues it's so quiet, he almost can't hear. "But then, what would have been the point?"

**Beat.**

After they part from Alice and Cyrus, she tells him again: The Red Queen. The hunt for the genie. The alliance with Jafar. All to change the laws of magic. All for one purpose, all just to - -

No. 

She still wants - she still loves - -

 _No._ It's too much like what he used to want to hear from Anastasia. He can't believe that; he can't. 

Well ...

Will scowls at himself. So what if he does believe it, even? What's that change, anyway? Nothing. Nothing at all. He can't trust her again. She's the Red Queen. You can't trust the Red Queen. Hell, he doesn't dare trust anything, any more - least of all the mess of craving and old pain knocking about in his empty chest.

Focus on the goal, Will Scarlet. Time to visit the Rabbit.

She strides ahead, and he follows.

**Beat.**

He throws darts at the Red Queen's face.

He throws darts at his heart.

**Beat.**

"I can't figure it out. Who are you?" Will wipes a hand over his face, scratches his scalp. What's it about Jafar's dungeon, bringing it all out? Why can't he keep his mouth shut? But he can't. "You're not the same. Anastasia wasn't cruel. The Red Queen is. Who _are_ you?" 

He knows he sounds bitter. Better that than sounding broken, even if he is.

"I know I was a terrible queen!" she snaps. "It wasn't supposed to matter!"

Of course not. "Because what do other people matter, right? It's always all about _you_."

"Because it was never supposed to be real!" The burst of anger leaves her, then, and she curls in on herself, tears running down her face again. "Don't you see? I was going to fix everything. Once I went to change the past, none of it would ever have happened. What did it matter how many people I hurt?"

He wants to shake her. Shake her, or cup his hand over her cheek and brush away her tears. "Where'd you learn to be that cold?" 

Ana merely turns her head, her lips twisting down into the saddest smile he's ever seen. "Says the man who hid his heart rather than suffer it in his chest."

**Beat.**

Red pulsing glow in Jafar's hand, coming for him. There's no escape, no running, not any more. 

And it's his own damn fool self who did it, after all - he's the bloody fool who told Jafar where he hid it. Because Jafar had - because Will couldn't - because Ana ...

Because Ana. 

**Beat.**

Running. 

A thief's got to be good at running, and they're both thieves.

A hopeless man's a good runner; no reason to hold still. A desperate woman with a desperate hope - she might run even faster.

Run from the grief of what you can't have. Run after what you lost, trying to catch it again. Fool's race, for the both of them, fools that they are. All the running they could do, and where's it got them? Still trapped in the loss of their moment. 

All the running they've done, and in the end, inevitably, they've fallen behind.

Loss always catches up. 

**Beat.**

Red pulsing glow, forced into Will's unwilling chest by Jafar's hand. Heartbeat, settling back into its space, thundering through him, every beat a tide crashing down on him. Everything he held at arm's length, close and warm, sharp and piercing, a familiar, intimate pain.

Heartbeat, thrumming in every fibre of his body, every thread of his soul.

He forces his head up, raises his eyes, and there she is. "Ana," he breathes, and he shatters, falling to pieces before her, lays everything at her feet, pours himself into a desperate kiss.

**Beat.**

One heart, beating. 

It always was, even if not in his chest.

Two hearts, beating together.

They always were.

**Beat.**

Jafar rips her away from him. Flash of a blade, and she falls - falls - -

**Beat.**

**Beat.**

**Beat.**

One heart, alone, beating in Will's chest. If only he could rip it out again. 

But he knows better this time. Heart or no heart, she's written into his soul. 

He screams.

**Beat.**


End file.
